Coaching & Leadership Archives • SpriggHR

5 Reasons to Hold Regular All-Hands Meetings

Zach Parkes — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 16:07:38 +0000

5 Reasons to Hold Regular All-Hands Meetings

When executed properly, all-hands meetings have the potential to drive a level of transparency and alignment within your team that will make your business stronger.

What are All-Hands Meetings?

It is widely known across industries that transparency within an organization drives success and business strength. One of the best ways a company can foster that sense of transparency and trust with their employees and teams is through the use of all-hands meetings.

All-hands meetings are regular, company-wide meetings where all employees gather with leadership to discuss company matters. The general objectives of an all-hands meeting are to:

Share the business updates of the past month, quarter, year, season, etc.
Drive alignment around the company’s mission and strategy
Celebrate company milestones and recognize the individuals who made them possible
Give everyone in the company a chance to ask questions and clarify any concerns

Any and all organizations can stand to benefit from holding regular all-hands meetings, regardless of company size or age, or the scope and level of the all-hands meetings you choose to conduct.

Why are All-Hands Meetings Valuable?

Company-wide, all-hands meetings have the potential to bring your teams together in an incredible valuable way. It provides perspective on the state of the business at team and department levels, and can highlight the importance of every employee’s contribution and effort of moving towards company goals.

Here are several key benefits to holding regular all-hands meetings for your organization:

1. Keeps your team updated and improves alignment.

All-hands meetings are one of the best opportunities you have to ensure all your team members are on the same page about everything business-related. This goes beyond simply sharing organizational and people updates, which can be done in much less expensive ways. By emphasizing company mission, strategy, and objectives, all-hands meetings provide you with the chance to accurately align your employees on the company goals, pointing them in the right direction and ensuring success down the line.

2. Celebrates people and uplifts team spirit and morale.

Company achievements cannot exist without consistent efforts from the people involved. Celebrating your team members’ successes and recognizing their hard work is just as important as keeping them in the loop on business updates. Especially when your employees are feeling overwhelmed or discouraged, one of the best ways to boost their morale is to review the highlights of their efforts and give shout-outs to the individuals who helped achieve them.

A good way to do this is to involve your team members in the recognition process. Have employees think of one team member who went the extra mile for them or performed exceptionally well over the past month or quarter. Generating a word cloud of the results and projecting it on screen is an excellent way to have several top players feel valued and appreciated, while still shouting out the exceptional performers. Another activity could be to crowdsource company highlights from the employees during the meeting itself. As opposed to having speakers reviewing the highlights, invite attendees to share their personal high points with the people sitting near them, then submit them into an open text poll using their phones and acknowledge the top ones on screen.

3. Gives a voice to everyone.

An all-hands meeting is one of the best places to generate a forum for employee questions, and address employee concerns from every corner. Holding an open Q&A with leadership may be useful in helping you uncover the most hot-topic issues in the organization, encouraging workplace transparency. A good rule of thumb is to allow for at least 20% of your all-hands meeting time to be dedicated to Q&A. It may be helpful to collect questions in the days leading up to the meeting as well, allowing executives and panelists to prepare thorough answers beforehand and have a general sense of the areas of topics the employees will want to discuss.

4. Fosters a healthy company culture.

All-hands meetings are one of the best places not only to show your company culture, but to grow it as well. Demonstrating and strengthening your company culture by involving the people that the meeting is first and foremost about is critical. Let them contribute to the agenda and co-create the program and run activities where attendees enjoy themselves. At the end of the day, all-hands meetings are for your employees, so give them good reason to be excited about being there in the first place.

5. Connects remote teams and workers with executives.

While imagining company-wide in-person gatherings is difficult right now, understanding the value of connectivity that they present is just as important as ever. All-hands meetings are a unique chance to connect your remote workers with headquarters, and truly make them feel part of the company and the organizational community as a whole.

Certain companies even have the majority, if not all, of their workers working remotely, meaning they run their all-hands meetings fully online. We will investigate best practices for holding all-hands meetings remotely later but understanding the value of connectivity they bring beyond the regular virtual check-ins you may hold with your team is critical.

Best Practices for Running All-Hands Meetings

One of the biggest benefits of holding regular all-hands meetings is the opportunity it presents for productive interactions within teams and between employees and leadership. This intermingling can spark new connections, inspire new ideas, and can drive your company forward while keeping everyone aligned and on-track.

But, not all all-hands meetings are created equal by nature. If you want to get the most out of your all-hands meetings, ensure their effectiveness, and have everyone who walks away feeling included and excited about the future of your organization, there are a few best practices you should follow:

Prep Your Team

Especially if your organization is not used to holding regular all-hands meetings, worrying your employees during the scheduling process is the last thing you’ll want to be doing. Critical to the success of any all-hands is its establishment as a neutral event beforehand.

While sending out meeting invitations, include the all-hands agenda, and clearly outline what it is you are going to be discussing. Provide attendees with some idea of what to expect, especially if this is your company’s very first all-hands meeting. Otherwise, people will only be able to speculate, and you risk having your employees assume a worst-case scenario.

Keep All-Hands Meetings Short and On Time

Especially for larger companies, having every individual in the organization in one room can be daunting, especially when it comes to the challenge of keeping each and every one of them engaged. This is why you should aim to keep your all-hands meetings short and to the point where you can, ensuring they remain effective creating a lasting impression on its attendees.

Depending on how much ground you need to cover, and how much you have outlined in the agenda, anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour should be plenty. If you have plotted out a day’s worth of events, ensure you break it up with engaging activities and events that will keep your team focused and participating. In addition, it is important that you start and end the meeting on time. Everyone has busy calendars, and you have asked your entire company to step away from their responsibilities to attend this meeting, so it is critical that you demonstrate your respect for their time.

Focus on the Right Content

Keeping your all-hands meeting attendees engaged and attended is your biggest responsibility, but it can also be your biggest challenge if you waste too much time on the wrong topics. While you may be inclined to share every last detail about certain updates and projects, aim to focus the majority of your time on the content that is relevant and interesting to the entire company.

Keeping all-hands meetings relevant to the organization as a whole can be difficult, but a good rule of thumb to follow is the three-category strategy: first, discuss the critical information, then dive into present-day business and updates, and end it off with something fun, social, or interactive. If you have a full day planned, try to organize the content and scheduling around this pattern.

When it comes to the present-day business, avoid going too deep into the minutiae of things. Your presentation or discussion should aim to provide a general overview of what’s happening within your company, and if certain employees want to learn more, they can follow up directly with the appropriate contact person or team.

Switch Things Up

For companies that have already gotten into the habit of holding regular all-hands meetings, it can be tricky not to fall into the trap of it digressing into an hour-long lecture from your leadership. While keeping leadership input at the forefront is important, you should still aim to keep the meetings interesting and engaging for everyone in attendance.

Your employees likely don’t want to hear from the same handful of executives every month. Switching up the presenter roster is a great way to keep the audience excited about what they will be hearing and provides them the opportunity to learn more about other teams that they may not have the opportunity to work with on the day-to-day.

Share Successes and Opportunities for Growth

Involving presenters from specific teams is a great strategy, but it is important to stress transparency in what they present to the wider organization too. It is likely that they are going to want to put their best work at the forefront, and while all-hands meetings are one of the best places to share successes and provide recognition where it is deserved, it’s also an excellent forum for sharing learning opportunities and tips for growth and improvement.

Celebrate the accomplishments of your team, and recognize their progress and successes, but ensure that people also have the chance to hear what others in the company have learned, and what hasn’t worked well for them. When asking a team to present at an all-hands meeting, ask them to share both their successes and their challenges, and the same rings true for the leadership team. By keeping everyone in the organization informed on team-specific challenges, and the strategies they used to overcome them, those learning opportunities that were only accessible to a single team or leader are then opened up to the entire organization.

Aim for Interactivity

Employees won’t be very engaged if all-hands simply involve someone standing at the front of the room and talking at them for an hour. Keeping the entire team engaged is essential, so aim to seek out new ways to make your all-hands meetings more interactive. We have already discussed the value of holding Q&A sessions and implementing real-time interaction from meeting attendees. Open the floor regularly for Q&As, and have live questionnaires and responses from meeting attendees, but also consistently seek out inventive activities and events that can promote engagement at your meetings.

Ask for Feedback

All-hands meetings are pointless if your employees aren’t getting what they need to out of them. One of the most important components of effective all-hands meetings is the mechanisms in place that ensure their continued effectiveness, and there is no better source for that than employee feedback.

Following each all-hands meeting, follow up for feedback. Ask them what it is they enjoyed about the all-hands, what they think could be improved upon, and what they would like to see changed for the next meeting. Take the time to read through all that feedback and use it as criterion for improvement that will drive the planning and execution of your next all-hands meeting. Taking employee feedback and using it to improve and evolve how you run your all-hands not only increases their effectiveness and impact, but it also makes your team feel respected and heard.

How Can You Hold Regular All-Hands Meetings Remotely?

It is likely that many companies are facing the need to shift all their in-person events online for the next while and possibly indefinitely, but keep in mind that running an all-hands meeting in a virtual space can still have as much impact as if you were sitting in the same room together. They key is smoothing out all the wrinkles beforehand. Here are the three general stages to holding your regular all-hands meetings virtually:

Tech Setup

Choosing a reliable video conferencing tool is the first step. A popular choice currently is Zoom, but other strong platforms include GoToMeeting, Skype for Business, Join.me, Roundee, Adobe Connect, and Google Hangouts. If you plan on presenting slides, ensure they run seamlessly on the platform, and test out any interactive features such as running live polls and Q&As beforehand as well.

Preparation Phase

Like you would for an in-person all-hands meeting, the next stage is the assign specific roles to members of your team. There should be multiple speakers present at the meeting, since switching speakers helps break monotony and brings in multiple perspectives from different corners of your organization. Introducing a moderator can also be useful, which means having them greet your teammates as they join the call, deliver a kick-off speech, and keep an eye on the agenda. Especially for online interactive activities, assigning someone the role of discussion facilitator to field incoming questions and steer the discussion according to employee input can help keep the Q&A sessions running as smoothly as possible.

One of the most important parts of the planning phase is to raise awareness of the meeting’s date and time. Aim to put out a calendar invitation well in advance so as many employees can make it as possible, and ensure you attach all the important details to that invitation, such as a link to the conference call, a link to the interactive features, and a brief agenda outline.

Finally, conducting a dry run of your all-hands is essentially, especially if you are running it in a virtual setting. Test out the technology, review the agenda several times with all the key players (speakers, moderator, facilitators), and rehearse the content as much as you can.

Delivering Content and Facilitating Interaction

A strong start to your virtual all-hands meeting will set the tone for the rest of the meeting, so make sure your introduction is as punchy as engaging as possible. Have your moderator welcome attendees and dedicate the first few minutes to ideally an icebreaker that can include all. Remote workers across the country are all facing challenges of loneliness and isolation, so spending some time to socialize before the meeting starts can help put your employees at ease. In addition, encourage your colleagues to turn on their cameras for the meeting. It is likely that many of their virtual calls and meetings have been voice-only, but having employee faces on screen can make the virtual all-hands meeting feel much more personal and interactive.

When it comes to slide presentation, keep in mind that attending virtual meetings demands much more attention than in-office meetings. They are much more prone to distraction when in their home environment, so don’t overwhelm your audience with a too-heavy presentation or daunting visuals. Simplify your presentation slides, keeping them captivating and easy to look at while the essence of the content is in what you are saying.

Presenting creative ways to deliver content and inviting employee’s participation is also important. You can conduct live polls, gauging employee satisfaction and crowdsourcing their ideas and opinions, or you can turn company stats into interactive quizzes where colleagues can have a guess at how well the organization is doing. Not only does it transform the more mundane topics into something fun, but it helps re-engage your virtual audience in case they have started to tune out. The Q&A also remains just as critical. It can be difficult for teammates to interrupt the presenter and ask questions on a virtual meeting, so setting up a Q&A tool online is an excellent solution. Attendees will be able to send in their questions as they come up throughout the meeting, and your facilitator can build a discussion around the top questions during the Q&A session.

In Summary

Running all-hands meetings regularly can be the key to strengthening your business, and now that you know how to optimize your meetings and yield the most successful results from them, all that’s left to do is get all hands-on deck and start planning for your next one.

The post 5 Reasons to Hold Regular All-Hands Meetings appeared first on SpriggHR.

The Importance of Leadership Communication

Emily Barr — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 18:37:11 +0000

The Importance of Leadership Communication

The key to becoming a great leader has always been being skilled in communication. Especially today, when communication channels are rapidly increasing and the need for connectivity between a leader and their employees is in high demand, effective leadership communication is a definitive cornerstone to business success. If you want to be able to implement changes and produce real business results for your company, you first need to learn the skills necessary to have effective workplace conversations.

Leadership Communication Defined

Looking at effective workplace communication as a 2-way street is important, but it also glazes over some of the complexities involved in communication itself, particularly from a leadership perspective. Effective leadership communication is far from a new business buzz phrase. Rather, it describes a particular approach to workplace communication that has a clear and critical impact on an organization’s bottom line.

Leadership communication consists largely of messages related to a company’s culture and core values. These messages are significant to the key stakeholders of the company, including the employees, customers, strategic partners, shareholders, and media. When it comes to communications from leaders, they are critical because of their direct impact on this relayed message regarding the organization’s vision, mission, and transformations. The most important goal of leadership communication is to cultivate a sense of trust in the workplace through the messaging coming from leaders, keeping employees engaged and focused in the right direction.

The Importance of Leadership Communication

Communication is a core leadership function, meaning effective workplace communication and effective leadership are closely intertwined. An effective leader needs to be a skilled communicator, applying that skill in relationships at the organizational level, in larger communities and groups, and sometimes even on a global scale. However, according to the statistics, 57% of employees report not being given clear directions, and as much as 69% of managers are not comfortable communicating with their employees in general.

The problem here goes beyond managers lacking confidence or the skill levels necessary to be successful business leaders. Rather, leaders who are falling short in the communications department will have a direct negative impact on employee satisfaction, motivation, and productivity levels. Without effective leadership communication in place, a leader cannot and should not expect their employees to be engaged and connected in the workplace, introducing a host of other detrimental impacts on the success of the business.

Keeping employees motivated and driven towards success should remain a top priority for any leader. But, in order to inspire and motivate in the first place, business leaders need to establish and foster a strong line of communication. As a leader, you need to think with clarity, express ideas, and disseminate information to a multitude of audiences. A good leader can handle the rapid flows of information that circulate within the organization, and between customers, partners, and any other stakeholders. Essentially, maintaining strong leadership communication within the workplace is the key to keeping your business not just afloat, but thriving in the industry as a whole.

Tips to Optimize Your Leadership Communication

Fostering strong lines of communication as a leader introduces a particular set of goals that differ largely from the business skill of general communication. As a leader, it is your responsibility not only to have good basic communication skills, but also to ensure that the lines of communication you open within your business cover the following leadership goals:

Align employees with the company culture.
Align employees with the company’s strategic goals.
Build trust within the workplace.
Maintain employee engagement.
Encourage two-way conversations and open dialogue.
Promote employee collaboration and teamwork.
Keep employees informed.
Communicate any upcoming changes effectively and in a timely manner.
Prevent internal miscommunications.
Disseminate important information and make it available to employees.

Best Practices for Effective Leadership Communication.

Aligning your communications strategy with the above leadership objectives is critical, but how do you know your skills have matured enough to ensure your leadership communication is as effective as it can be? The number one thing great leadership communicators have in common is they have an accurate sense of situational and contextual awareness. That is to say, they are great listeners and astute in their observations, drawing on contextual clues naturally to heighten their communication skillset.

A great leadership communicator can read the individuals or groups they are conversing with, sensing the mood, dynamics, attitudes, values, and concerns associated with the other and can easily adapt their messaging to said environment without missing a beat. To know you have reached the point where your interactions as a leader translate to your presence as an excellent communicator, aim to employ the following best practices into your method of leadership communication:

1. Be honest.

People won’t be open to those they don’t trust, and this is especially true when it comes to leadership. When employees, shareholders, partners, or any other key stakeholders have a sense that a leader is worthy of their trust, they will invest time and take risks for the business in a way that they never would if the leader had a reputation built upon a lack of integrity. However, keep in mind that demanding trust rarely works – it is best earned through right actions, thinking, and decision making.

2. Get personal.

Effective leadership communication should be a dialogue, not a monologue. The more personal and engaging a conversation is, the more effective it will be for both parties. If you remain at arm’s length from your employees, you will remain in the dark and only ever receive a highly sanitized recounting of the truth. Developing meaningful relationships with people and opening a personable, consistent dialogue with them is key to being able to solve the issues that they encounter before it’s too late.

3. Be specific.

Effective communication hinges on clarity. Being simple and concise in your communication efforts will always be more effective than being complicated, confusing, or superfluous. Especially today, time is a precious commodity, and the best leaders know just how to trim the fat and hit the high points in what they are communicating. Without understanding the value of brevity and clarity, you won’t ever be rewarded with insight into the granular level of things, since people will tune you out long before you reach that point.

4. Focus on the leave-behinds.

Being skilled in leadership communication goes beyond having the ability to learn and gather information while communicating. The best communicators are also adept at transferring ideas, aligning expectations, inspiring action, and disseminating their overall vision. When you approach each interaction with a focus on contributing more than receiving, you can consider yourself an effective communicator.

5. Keep an open mind.

The rigidity of a closed mind, especially in today’s climate, is one of the greatest limiting factors of new opportunities that exists. When a leader is willing to seek out those who hold countering opinions, or who stand in opposing positions, and seeks not to convince them to change their mind but rather to understand their point of view on things, their leadership is elevated to a whole new level. Hold open dialogues with those you confront, challenge, and develop you and your business perspectives. Keep in mind that it is not the opinion that matters, but rather your willingness to discuss, debate, and learn.

6. Listen.

A long-standing cornerstone of great communication is the ability to simply stop talking and listen. A strong leader has an intuitive sense of when they need to dial it up, dial it down, and dial it off altogether. Broadcasting your message is important but doing so ad nauseum will produce much fewer effective results as starting meaningful conversations with others. The most worthwhile form of dialogue takes place not in the form of a detached lecture or monologue, but rather in an engaging conversation.

7. Read between the lines.

Any strong leader needs to be able to look past the surface-level of things and understand what is not being said, witnessed, or heard outright. It’s one of the most useful skills needed to be able to paint a bigger picture of any kind of situation, grounding itself in contextual and situational clues that help you lead in a multifaceted way.

8. Speak to groups as individuals.

A great leader is one who can tailor their communication in such a way that their message still feels personalized, regardless of the size of the audience. Knowing how to work a room and establish credibility, trust, and rapport are the key practices to holding successful interactions with stakeholders.

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Leadership Communication

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The Cost of Poor Leadership Communication

One of the biggest barriers to having high-quality conversations is a simple fear of sharing what you are really thinking and feeling. Being genuine is intimidating, but the intimidation should be coming from those insincere conversations, because they cost the company much more than many would expect.

According to a study done by The Economist Intelligence Unit, the responses received from executives, managers, and junior staff members alike highlighted several key areas where communication breakdowns in the workplace have major consequences for business as a whole:

52% of employees said that poor communication leads to higher stress levels.
44% of employees reported poor communication causes failure in completing their projects.
31% of employees said poor communication causes them to miss their performance goals.
20% of employees in poorly communicative work environments said that they experience obstacles in innovation.
18% of employees report that poor communication leads to an increase in lost new sales opportunities.

Evidently, the cost of poor leadership communication is extremely high. But, the right internal communications strategy, and the implementation of the best leadership communications practices, can help leaders improve their communication efforts and eliminate the biggest leadership communication challenges being faced today. Communicating with the modern employee can be tricky, but they are relying on you to lead them and align them and their efforts with business objectives and success. You can only do this when you recognize the importance of maintaining an effective leadership communication strategy.

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Short-Term Goals & the Benefits of Quick Wins

Emily Barr — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 17:53:15 +0000

Short-Term Goals & the Benefits of Quick Wins

When it comes to achieving personal and professional success, one of the most underrated yet powerful tools are short-term goals. Despite their profound effect on the progress that employees make towards their professional aspirations, few even know how to recognize one, let alone how to set one effectively.

If goals are our vision of an ideal future that we hope to eventually reach for ourselves, then we need to have a thorough understanding of, and a refined focus on, short-term goals.

What are Short-term goals?

Any goal you set can be designated as either short-term or long-term depending on the timeline that you plan to achieve it under. While long term goals usually have a timeframe of one to several years, short-term goals can be defined as the actions that you plan to accomplish in a shorter amount of time. This could range from hours, days, weeks and up to months. The critical distinction is that a short-term goal is an outcome that you want to achieve in 12 months or less.

Short-term goals are usually the building blocks for long term goals and are sometimes referred to as proximal goals. For instance, your longer-term goal may be to start your own business, so your short-term goals could be smaller steps working towards that aspiration, such as registering your business name by the end of the month, applying for loans before three months have passed, seek out business partners or potential talent before the year ends, and so on. Because of this, short-term goals tend to be easier to accomplish, simply because they focus on the immediate future with more manageable tasks involved in their completion.

The Benefits of Setting and Achieving Short-term goals

The secret to achieving most of your objectives, whether personal, financial, or professional, is to establish shorter-term desires that are relevant, achievable, easy to measure, and time sensitive.

If you are looking to improve yourself in some way, you should establish a plan and break it into smaller sections so you can work towards realizing it. Short-term goals are the tools you can use to help you see where you are going along the way, so you don’t get derailed before you can accomplish what is it you have set out to do. Some specific benefits of setting and achieving short-term goals include:

1. Improved Focus

Short-term goals help you maintain focus on the path you have set out towards achieving your longer-term target. When you have a shorter action plan, you don’t get distracted or confused on how the goal is progressing. Rather, you can direct most of your focus on the daily/weekly/monthly plan and ensure each of those smaller steps towards the larger objective is completed to the best of your ability.

2. Provide Clarity to Your Overall Plan

Dividing your longer-term aspiration into shorter targets helps you to maintain a consistent and clear understanding of what your overall objective is. When a specific long-term goal is unpacked, and you have a plan of action for reaching it by working your way through the shorter and more manageable action steps, you can address any gaps or issues in your process much more readily and reach your longer-term desire much more efficiently.

3. They Combat Procrastination

No one is immune to the habit of procrastination, though some may find that they fall into the trap more often when it comes to tackling long-term goals, which can seem daunting and unmanageable even to the most experienced employee. Setting short-term goals is one of the best ways to overcome that challenge, largely due to the specific and short deadlines that accompany them. For example, if your long-term goal is to get fit in one year, setting out to accomplish that only with your end goal in mind can make you lose motivation very quickly. Instead, you can commit to exercising for 15 minutes every day for the next month, and then decide your personal mission for the following month, and so on.

4. Gain Insightful Feedback

The instant and insightful feedback you can gain from completing short-term goals is one of their most valuable assets. Rather than banking on the success of your long-term goal, and investing long amounts of time without a clear understanding of whether your efforts will eventually pay off, short-term goals provide you with consistent updates on your progress and can help draw attention to any obstacles that are preventing you from reaching your long-term objective faster.

Making Your Short-Term Goals S.M.A.R.T(ER)

An often-heard criteria for the setting of goals is the S.M.A.R.T (ER) acronym, a memory-aid for the seven features you should aim to build into every goal you set. There are various ways to define these parameters, but S.M.A.R.T(ER) goals are generally understood to be:

Simple – an outsider should be able to understand your goal without further explanation.
Measurable – your goal is trackable, either with simple Y/N or clear units of measurement.
Actionable – the goal begins with a verb that directs the action (e.g. do, read, learn, etc.);
Realistic – the goal is practical and achievable, and if not, then you have broken it down further or set a process goal.
Time–Bound – the timeframe of the goal is clearly defined and achievable (e.g. a weekly goal should be doable within 7 days, a monthly goal within 30 days, etc.)
Exciting – you have laid out methods to inspire and motivate yourself to finish the goal; and
Relevant – the goal is always tied back directly to your bigger-picture thinking and projects.

If there are projects or goals in parts of your life that you tend to avoid, or that no matter how much effort you put in you don’t see substantial progress in, then there is a good chance some of your steps are missing one or more of these attributes. Aim to measure up every goal you set, whether short-term or long-term, against these standards, and the success rate of your achievement of them will increase tenfold.

Achievable and S.M.A.R.T Short Terms Goals

Some examples of short-term goals that meet the S.M.A.R.T criteria, and are achievable and beneficial to several areas of your life, include:

Short-Term Personal Goals

Work on a gratitude journal every night for one week.
Read at least one book per month.
Donate to charity once a month for four months.
Complete a personal improvement course in one month.
Turn off all devices by 10pm each night for two weeks.
Start a garden within a week and tend to it daily for two months.

Short-Term Financial Goals

Set up a savings account this month.
Reduce or eliminate your credit card debt by the end of the year.
Start tracking your budget this month.
Save 10% of your income each month towards emergencies.
Consult a financial advisor within two weeks.
Download an app for monitoring daily expenditure this evening.

Short-Term Fitness Goals

Exercise in the gym for three days each week, from 7pm to 9pm.
Cut off caffeine and drink water instead for one month.
Purchase workout gear by the end of the week.
Do a 30-minute yoga session every Sunday.
Avoid eating out and restaurants and fast food places for two weeks.
Measure your weight every three weeks.

Short-Term Career Goals

Finish a relevant online course every two months.
Attend an online job conference or business convention within 60 days.
Report to (or log into) your workplace or meeting 10 minutes earlier than usual for one month.
Keep your workstation organized and declutter it every Friday for one month.
Earn a professional certificate by the end of the year.

Measuring and Tracking Short-term goal Progress

While some may have a clear understanding of what the organization’s longer-term objectives are, and some may have established personal career goals that improve their own work efforts, managing and tracking the progress towards company results can be difficult for many leaders. Sprigg offers a seamless solution, providing software that helps establish performance expectations through best-practice processes like S.M.A.R.T Goal Setting, or using OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).

Sprigg’s goal-setting process helps you develop a clear picture between employee short-term goals, aligning all objectives to the key organizational results and measuring them against clear business metrics. It also streamlines the tracking and measurement of progress, where the percentage of goal completion can be viewed through the dashboard or real-time update requests.

By transforming your organization’s approach to goal setting, whether short-term or long-term, you are bound to see results that will drive your business towards success. Goal alignment increases employee engagement and improves short-term results, transparency in progress sets clear standards of accountability and ownership, and shorter-term objective results provide valuable, real-time feedback that engages your team and drives better results.

The post Short-Term Goals & the Benefits of Quick Wins appeared first on SpriggHR.

Strategy vs. Tactics: How Do They Work Together?

Emily Barr — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 18:58:00 +0000

Strategy vs. Tactics: How Do They Work Together?

Strategy and tactics are two common enough business terms. But, what exactly do they mean? What is the difference between strategy vs. tactics, and why is that difference so important? Understanding the contrast between the two is more important than many people think, and so too is recognizing the most effective ways to use each.

Strategy vs. Tactics

There are several key distinctions between strategy and tactics, but the central difference can be drawn out by thinking of strategy of the destination and how you are going to get there, and tactics as the specific actions you are going to take along the way.

Strategy and Tactics Defined

Strategy and tactics originated as military terminology about 2,500 years ago, when Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. tactics without strategy is the noise before the defeat.” Examining this from a metaphorical standpoint, the distinction becomes clear. Strategy is the overarching plan or set of goals you are hoping to achieve, and changing them is a slow, arduous, but still possible process. Tactics are the specific actions or steps you undertake to accomplish that strategy.

When comparing strategy vs. tactics, it is important to note that they are not, and never have been, at odds with one another – rather, they’re on the same team. The strategic and the tactical can be defined as follows:

Strategy defines your long-term goals, and how you’re planning on achieving them. The strategy gives you the path you need toward achieving your company’s mission.
Tactics are concrete, and oriented toward smaller steps and a shorter time frame along the way. For your organization, tactics involve the best practices, specific plans, resources, and all other initiatives you use along the path towards achieving the organizational mission.

The Relationship Between Strategy vs. Tactics

Any time an organization decides on a goal, and invests in the resources needed to achieve it, it can be considered strategizing. Consider the example of war. Strategy in that sense is not about the moving of armies over geography. Rather, it encompasses the overall struggle of adversarial forces. In order to articulate a good strategy, you should be precise in your goal while still encompassing the entirety of what you are hoping to achieve. It is not about immediate success, but rather success in the long-term.

The central idea of strategy is the application of strength against the most promising opportunity. A strong strategy does not draw exclusively from existing strength, it also works to create strength. This is where tactics come into play. The definition of strategy as creating strength helps illustrate just how interconnected strategy and tactics truly are. As you execute your strategy, you choose specific tactics that reinforce and build strength and traction toward the strategic intent as they are deployed. Robert Greene stated in “The 33 Strategies of War” that “Strategy is the art of looking beyond the present… and calculating ahead. Focus on your goal and plot to reach it.” Along the way, the fuel that propels your company towards its goal will need to be replenished with carefully selected tactics, helping you stay on track towards your ultimate strategic goal.

Overall, a good rule of thumb for understanding the distinction between strategy and tactics is, “think strategically, act tactically.” Some examples of how strategy and tactics interact can help illustrate that distinction:

1. A strategy is based on extensive research, planning, and internal reflection.

Strategy is a long-term vision, setting it apart from tactics, which are short term actions. For example, your marketing strategy may be to improve your influence and performance on social media, so your tactics might be to determine the best social media channels for your company and the most effective messages to communicate to your audiences.

Keep in mind that it is much easier to adjust tactics to course-correct your plan of action than it is to completely overhaul your strategy. Tactics can and do have an influence on the success of your strategy, so if adjustments need to be made, do so with those rather than your strategic plan overall.

2. Strategy and tactics work together to an end.

A strategy without tactics won’t ever be executed or help you achieve your goals, just as tactics without a strategy won’t ever propel your business in the desirable direction. For example, your strategy may be to climb a mountain, and a key component of that strategy is to decide which side of the mountain you should climb. The tactics are the gear you’d buy, who you’d bring with you, your complete trip itinerary, the travel time, what season you’d go in, how long your trip would be, and so on. Simply put, one cannot exist without the other.

3. Strategy and tactics must always align with one another.

You may find a project or practice (i.e. a tactic) desirable or interesting, but it is only worth pursuing if it aligns with your long-term strategy. Your strategy should inform you on which tactics your company will execute or invest in, keeping your progress on track.

4. Even the best strategy and tactics won’t cover everything.

However ambitious your aspirations, resources will always be finite. Choosing the right strategy and corresponding tactics ensures your efforts are directed toward achieving your vision, but only in the most efficient manner possible. No process is immune to hiccups along the way.

Strategy vs. Tactics in Action

Before you can make any progress towards your strategic goals, you first need to have a solid set of objectives in mind. In order for your strategy to be most effective, and in order to develop that strong framework that will inform you on which tactics are most suitable for company progress, you need to have an outline of your goals and an intended audience already determined. Any goal you set should be S.M.A.R.T:

Specific – can the detail in the information sufficiently identify problems or opportunities?
Measurable – can a metric be created from a quantitative or qualitative attribute of the goal?
Actionable – can the information achieved from the goal be used to improve performance, or another important aspect of business?
Relevant – can the information achieved be applied to the specific problem being faced by the company?
Time–Related – can the information be viewed and referenced over time in order to identify trends?

In order to gain a thorough understanding of how strategy and tactics interact, let’s look at an example of what an organizational goal may be. Evidently, your company will have several goals running at the same time, and as such, your strategies should be structured in a way that differentiates your business from the competition.

Consider the goal of increasing sales revenue by 25% by the end of the fiscal year. You have nailed down the overarching organizational goal, now it’s time to identify the objectives involved in that goal, measuring them against the S.M.A.R.T criteria. Let’s say the specific examples you draw from this goal are as follows:

Increase brand awareness by 75% by fiscal year-end.
Increase website traffic by 50% compared to the previous fiscal year.

Examples of the strategies and tactics you could use to address these objectives are outlined below:

Objective

Example Strategy

Example Tactics

Increase brand awareness by 75% by fiscal year end.

Engage the target audience (TA) at key touch points in their day when they are the most receptive to brand messaging.

Run TV ads targeted at the TA in the middle of the day.
Run social media ads at lunchtime based around similar interests.
Acquire coverage in national magazines or blogs targeted at the TA.
Run online banner advertisements on XYZ sites targeted at TA in the evenings.
Sponsor local sporting events.
Create advertising content based around the lifestyle needs of your TA.

Increase website traffic by 50% compared with previous fiscal year.

Drive traffic from new unique visitors to your website.

Ensure the website URL is featured in all ads.
Add the website URL to all social media bios.
Start 10+ conversations per day with the TA on social media.
Lead industry-based social media chats online, encouraging influencers to join in.
Create video-based responses embedded in high-performing SEO blog posts, with transcripts.
Share video blog posts to people on other social media platforms, monitoring and responding to people asking questions.

In Summary

Define and clearly communicate your strategy. Identify the critical steps required to execute and aim to pursue clear and achievable objectives. Measure the progress along the way and Don’t be afraid to pivot during implementation, unforeseen circumstances are common enough and you must be agile enough to respond. If you map your strategy and execute carefully, you will achieve what most organizations do not.

The post Strategy vs. Tactics: How Do They Work Together? appeared first on SpriggHR.

4 Key Business Development Strategies for Optimal Growth

Emily Barr — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 18:28:58 +0000

4 Key Business Development Strategies for Optimal Growth

Your company’s business development strategies can be the key to the success or failure of your organization. It is the secret ingredient to transforming your business into one comprised of strong relationships, promising prospects, and increased revenues. Creating a strategy and an associated plan, and leveraging it in the right way, can propel an employee, a team, or an entire company to new levels of growth and profitability.

What is a Business Development Strategy?

Business development is the process used to identify, nurture, and acquire new clients and business opportunities to drive organizational growth and increase profits. Essentially, it is the creation of long-term value for a business from customers, markets, and relationships. The business development strategy is the document that outlines the strategy you will use to accomplish that goal.

The Importance of a Good Business Development Strategy

A strong business development strategy is the framework that instructs your team on how to find and generate high-value leads that will ultimately support the company’s long-term goals. If you do not have a strategy in place, your employees may struggle to identify those qualifying prospects, or even spend valuable time developing relationships with prospects who will never convert.

The scope of what business development looks like is wide, varying from organization to organization. Generally, professional service organizations generate new business by following a three-tier funnel approach. The first two stages are Attracting Prospects and Building Engagement, which are traditionally marketing functions. The third and final stage, Turning Opportunities into Clients, is traditionally a sales function. In this structure, the business development plan would be to seek out new channels of sales and distribution, as well as new marketing partners. This is an example of strategic business development.

Strategic Business Development

Strategic business development aims to align business development processes and procedures with the company’s strategic business goals. The object is to acquire the ideal clients for the organization’s highest priority services, accomplished by using brand promises that you are able to deliver on.

Actually, determining which targets to pursue, and which business development strategies to employ, to generate new business can be a risky decision. When a strategy is strong, suitable for the company’s goals, and is well implemented, it has the potential to drive high levels of growth and profitability for the business. A faulty strategy and implementation, however, can hinder growth and frustrate your top performers and most valuable talent. This is why it is critical to have a thorough understanding of the business development strategies that yield the best results for your company, and how to go about embedding those into your business development plan as a whole.

Creating a Business Development Strategy for Optimal Growth

The Four-Step Process

There are four main stages to go through when creating a firm, reliable business development strategy for your organization.

1. Identify Your Audience

In order to create a business development strategy that yields optimal growth and profit opportunities, you first need to identify your ideal audience. Focus on specific firms, industry fields, or individuals that are sure to propel your business forward. Aim for quality over quantity – a large audience is not always necessary, but a high-performing one always is.

Keep in mind that successful business development does not happen overnight. Strong relationships may take months, or even years, to turn into a sale. Similarly, unsuitable prospects will not reveal themselves to be so after your first encounter. This is why it’s important to nail down the exact target audience, so you don’t waste valuable time fostering a relationship with an unqualified prospect who will never close the deal.

2. Perform Market Research

Once your audience has been identified, you now need to learn as much as you can about them. Before you can begin encouraging them to work with you, you should be able to answer the following questions about them:

What are their primary issues?
What services do they need?
What is their approach to problem-solving currently?
How can your product or service improve their current situation?

Once you have a response to these questions, then you can begin to analyze your competition. Identify what sets you out from your competitors, leveraging that difference as your competitive advantage that you can then when communicating your value to prospects.

3. Determine the Appropriate Channels

Once you have identified your target audience, learned everything there is to know about them, and established a plan of action to set you apart from your competitors, you can begin to outline the channels you will use to achieve your target. This involves assessing your total revenue goals for the year and outlining the specific methods you will use to reach those goals. These channels are covered in the top business development strategies and tactics you can use to generate new business, which we will discuss later.

4. Define S.M.A.R.T. Goals

For each channel you have, set S.M.A.R.T (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-related) goals that will help you to measure and track your progress. Your overall business development goal does not necessarily have to be directly tied to generating profit and revenue, but there should be a component that aims at introducing new prospects to your company’s sales funnel.

Sprigg makes it easy to set effective SMART Goals that set you up for success!

The Top Business Development Strategies to Use Today

As discussed, the business development strategies used by your company can also be described as channels through which you work to achieve your total revenue and business targets. The most common business development strategies are a combination of networking, referrals, advertising, and content marketing. It is through the strategic use and leveraging of these outreach tactics that companies nurture successful business relationships and partnerships.

1. Networking

As the most universally used business strategy, networking is built on the theory that professional services buying decisions are rooted in trusted relationships, and the key to best developing new relationships is through face-to-face networking.

While many business relationships continue to develop that way, and the benefits of direct networking with your target audience remain valuable, networking can be an outdated practice in today’s market if utilized incorrectly. Modern buyers and prospects are time pressured, more so than they used to be, and face-to-face networking is a time-consuming process. It can also be expensive, if travel and time away from the office become habitual.

Companies can use new digital networking techniques to help cover the cost and time, reducing networking to a digital outreach strategy rather than a regular in-person meeting, but even social media requires an investment of valuable time and attention that can be lost if misused.

2. Referrals

Closely related to networking are referrals, which are often regarded as the mechanism that turns networking and client satisfaction into new business. A positive relationship with a satisfied customer can open the door to a whole new network of prospects, but reliance upon client referrals to drum up new business is risky if it is your only approach to growing as a company.

Referrals are useful, but they are also passive. They rely on your clients to identify the good prospects of your services, rather than you outlining a strategic advertisement plan, and also requires that they make referrals at the right time. While successful referrals happen all the time, referral sources often do not know the full range of how your products and services can help a potential client, meaning their success rate is much lower than if you were to do the outreach yourself.

Luckily, there are several new digital strategies that can accelerate the rate of positive and well-matched referrals. A critical point of this is boosting the visibility of your specific expertise. Your existing clients will have a better understanding of what it is you offer, leading to better referrals and an increase in a referral base larger than a few clients and business contacts.

3. Sponsorships and Advertising

Paid advertising and sponsored partnerships are a solid business development tactic. In today’s age when traditional advertising methods are losing their long-standing success rate, turning to well-targeted digital advertising is critical. The key to digital advertising is to find your target audience on their preferred platform and start your growth there. If your audience are avid YouTube users, create strong, targeted video ads and run them on there. If they have high engagement rates with your brand on Twitter, invest in advertisement there. Appropriately directed advertisements allow companies to get their messages and offers in front of the right people, without the excessive costs of general, sweeping ads on various platforms.

4. Thought Leadership and Content Marketing

The business development strategy of thought leadership and content marketing has one primary goal: make your expertise visible to potential clients and referral sources. We have already discussed the importance of refining your referral process to ensure the right expertise is being advertised among your referral pool, but that can only be achieved when your specific expertise is completely apparent.

This strategy can be accomplished through writing, speaking, or publishing content that demonstrates your expertise, and also how it can be applied to solve client problems. Long staples of professional business development strategies include books, articles, and speaking engagements, meaning many high visibility experts have built up their practices and businesses upon this strategy specifically.

Like all other approaches, changing times and technologies have reshaped the way this strategy can be leveraged to its highest potential. With digital communication the new norm, establishing your expertise to your target market is much easier and quicker than it used to be. Search engines have levelled the playing field, so that even relatively unknown individuals and businesses can become known to potential prospects outside their physical region. Webinars are commonplace, a democratized version that dominates the space public speaking used to take up, and blogs and websites give every business a firm 24/7 presence on the market.

In Summary

It is far more common than not for companies to combine different business development strategies to best suit their business and to reach their identified targets. However, it is essential that any approach to business development be carefully curated to eliminate the losses that come from misguided attempts to acquire new clients and business opportunities. Good intentions, no matter how ambitious, are of little real business development value. It is far more effective to implement a simple strategic plan than to dabble in several complex ones in hopes of positive results. Fewer elements, when competently implemented, always produce better results.

Ultimately, your business development strategy is the key to the success or failure of your company. It should be a primary goal to develop a strategy, and an associated plan of action, that will propel you and your company to new levels of growth and profitability.

The post 4 Key Business Development Strategies for Optimal Growth appeared first on SpriggHR.

Inclusive Leadership 101: How to Be an Inclusive Leader

Emily Barr — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 18:47:58 +0000

Inclusive Leadership 101: How to Be an Inclusive Leader

Being an inclusive leader is the key to optimizing diversity in the workplace, leveraging the power of inclusion to the company’s advantage, and yielding the required results are only possible when inclusivity takes priority.

What is Inclusive Leadership?

Inclusive leadership has rapidly become a popular topic in the last few years, largely due to the increased push on equitable access to equal opportunities in the workplace.

But what is it, exactly? Inclusive leadership exists when a leader shows optimism, promotes collaboration, and is viewed as progressive in their leadership style. Their principle goal is to identify the methods and outcomes that benefit as many people as possible, and since they aim to accommodate all players and not just themselves when making decisions, their decision-making process can be sometimes slower and / or cumbersome.

Inclusive leaders are people-oriented, typically excellent listeners, and can tap into the talents and motivations of their team members. They are patient, understanding and genuinely interested in others. Oftentimes, inclusive leaders prefer the status-quo, they can have difficulty initiating or embracing change, preferring incremental changes that minimize tension and uncertainty. However, at its core, inclusive leadership wants the group to succeed, not just the leader themselves, making it one of the most important facets of leadership.

Inclusive Leadership as a Beneficial Goal

In today’s day and age, progressive leadership demands that organizations move beyond token diversity alone to harnessing the potential that comes from inclusivity. While diversity is the equation, inclusion is the product, making the concept work by leveraging the wealth of knowledge, perspectives, and insights that exist in open, trusting, and diverse workplaces.

Inclusive leadership can allow organizations to achieve a highly competitive advantage, changing demographics across the workplace and in the market as a whole. Any organization that has a reputation of strong inclusivity becomes a highly sought-after company to work for, attracting top diverse talent and committed customers and clients alike. In turn, a highly diverse talent pool sparks greater creativity, propelling innovation for a company that can drive them to achieve great success.

How to Be an Inclusive Leader: The 3 Best Practices

Demonstrating inclusivity as a leader can be challenging for some. Even the leaders who fully embrace the business case for diversity, and who recognize the risk of group think in homogenous workforces, can sometimes feel unprepared to be inclusive. Although they aim for inclusive leadership, they don’t understand what to do, or how to modify their current approaches. This is where the importance of inclusive practices comes in. Possessing a thorough understanding of some of the best practices of inclusive leadership can help leaders overcome those hesitations and harness the power of inclusive leadership.

1. Show Appreciation

When your company experiences success, it is critical to acknowledge that you alone are not responsible. As a leader, you should recognize that great ideas and those who work hard, are a result of a team of talent. Inclusive leaders understand the importance of recognizing the contributions of others.

The team members are the driving forces that keep the teamwork moving along. Inclusive leadership is centred around caring more for the team succeeding together, than fulfilling the leader’s targets. Truly inclusive leaders acknowledge all ideas, even those poorly-conceived ones, in an effort to encourage better ones that will work for the company. Instead of saying “okay, but”, they aim to say “yes, and”, a style of leadership that stimulates better collaboration from their teams over time.

2. Demonstrate Emotion

While the direction of what you present to your team is crucial, so too is the way in which you communicate that to them. A leader’s emotions and gestures are just as scrutinized for meaning as their words are. If you display negative emotions, this can cause additional stress among colleagues and staff. As a leader, you are expected to hold a certain level of diplomacy, even when delivering bad news or speaking the hard truth. A leader can demand accountability or better results without resorting to belligerence.

People will always respond positively to an authentic expression of positive emotions. A leader who shows passion for the projects the company is undergoing, passion for the organization as a whole, and passion for the people involved can rally others in a way that lends itself to success. An inclusive leader that shows positive emotions such as excitement or enthusiasm for new projects, happiness over someone’s good work, or encouragement when obstacles arise, can be extremely motivating for a workforce.

3. Actually Listen

Effective communication is a two-way street, even for those in the highest of organization rankings. If you want to be listened to, you have to do your share of the listening, too. Gaining input from others, appreciating various perspectives and opinions, can improve your decision-making processes. It also allows for those that contributed to the process, even those that argued against, to be more engaged and likely to act on the supporting of those decisions.

That is not to say that everyone’s opinions should be put into practice, or that every single complaint needs to be satisfied immediately. Drawing on management judgement is still critical, but recognizing that some people will have better ideas, more experience, or more creativity, is important to inclusive leadership. Everyone should have an opportunity to be heard, and respected, and inclusive leaders aim to facilitate discussions that include everyone and focus on the issue at hand. They are more likely to obtain information they didn’t know or consider viewpoints that make them broaden their own views. When a leader is open and receptive to all perspectives, it encourages much more creative and responsive solutions, driving the organization forward at a much faster rate.

Inclusive Leadership is a Competitive Advantage in Today’s Market

Inclusive leaders are more than promoters of a diverse workplace. They work to be inclusive in their own thoughts, perceptions, actions, and decisions, and inspire an inclusive mindset in others. They are self-aware advocates for diversity, that also possess the necessary skills to leverage the benefits of a diverse team, achieving better performance overall. Inclusive leadership promotes organizations in which teams are open and trusting, able to work inclusively, leveraging diversity for greater adaptability, and achieving competitive results.

The post Inclusive Leadership 101: How to Be an Inclusive Leader appeared first on SpriggHR.

10 Must-Have Traits of a Corporate Secretary

Emily Barr — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 16:40:39 +0000

10 Must-Have Traits of a Corporate Secretary

The Corporate Secretary has one of the most integral roles in keeping a corporation running and successful, largely due to how their job influences every moving part of the company as a whole. Ultimately, they are responsible for ensuring the organization stays in compliance with regulatory and statutory requirements, and also executes all the decisions, changes, and resolutions put forward by the Board of Directors. Essentially, they are the glue that holds the corporation together.

What is a Corporate Secretary?

Regional laws often require every registered corporation to designate a corporate secretary. Corporate-specific laws also allow for the outlining of the powers and duties of the Corporate Secretary to be determined by the demands and needs of the business. However, while corporations have some say in the customization of their Corporate Secretary’s job description, there still remain industry guidelines that dictate the overarching responsibilities of a Corporate Secretary.

In general, Corporate Secretaries are the officers of corporations. They are charged with ensuring that all Board members have the proper advice and resources necessary for discharging their fiduciary duties to company shareholders, in accordance with regional or contractual laws and obligations. Corporate Secretaries are required to attend all Board of Director meetings, recording minutes of the meeting’s actions and documenting all proceedings properly.

Corporate Governance: The Secretary’s Role

Over time, and with the emergence of corporate governance the standard for Corporate Secretary duties have evolved to gear more towards governance objectives. This means that while corporate governance reframes the strategic choices of the corporation’s Board, the Corporate Secretary should serve as a confidante and resource to both the board and senior management. They play a leading role in governance, inhabiting the previously mentioned ‘officer’ role by providing advice and counsel on board responsibilities and logistics.

The Responsibilities of a Corporate Secretary

Board Meetings

One of the main responsibilities of the Corporate Secretary is planning, preparing, and executing all Board of Director meetings and committee meetings. This usually involves the following responsibilities:

1. Scheduling

The Corporate Secretary should know and comply with the corporation’s meeting notice requirements and establish a schedule that accommodates all Directors. When appropriate and necessary, the Corporate Secretary is also responsible for coordinating meeting logistics, e.g., issuing online meeting details or if scheduled on-site, all associated travel, accommodations, etc. They are responsible for scheduling an adequate number of meetings and providing ample time for the meetings to be conducted effectively.

2. Agendas

Part of the major responsibilities of a Corporate Secretary is ensuring a corporation acts in compliance with regional, federal, listing, contractual, and other requirements and regulations, as well as the company’s articles of incorporation and bylaws. In order to accomplish this, the Corporate Secretary usually establishes a basic agenda that extends for a full business year.

Throughout the year, the agenda is revised and updated according to changing business needs and demands. When setting this comprehensive corporate agenda, the Secretary must communicate regularly with the CEO, Human Resources, investors, accounting, legal, compliance, the Board chairman, and any other important agents that is directly affected by what goes into the agenda.

3. Materials and Presentations

When preparing a meeting agenda, as well as any other reports, handouts, or materials that will be used in the meeting, the Corporate Secretary has to consider delivery, security, and retention.

The chair of the Board can only conduct an efficient meeting when all board members have the necessary materials far enough in advance for them to adequately review them. This allows for adequate time to correct past minutes and revise the agenda prior to the beginning of the meeting. It also gives Board members time to prepare comments and questions applicable to the meeting’s agenda. The Secretary should distribute these materials prior to the meeting, unless past practices or corporate by-laws indicate otherwise.

4. Executive Liaisons

For larger boards, there are often smaller committees that meet outside of the standard board meetings. In these cases, the board assigns an executive point person to each committee to act as the chair during those meetings. Some common assignments include: CEO for the Board; CFO for the Audit Committee; Chief Human Resources Officer for the Compensation Committee; Corporate Secretary for the Nominating and Governance Committee.

If the Corporate Secretary is appointed as the executive to a committee meeting (usually the nominating and governance committee), they are bestowed a new set of duties to comply with on top of their standard Corporate Secretary responsibilities. This can include:

Adding written governance updates in each board mailing
Arranging education or workshop programs
Preparing background materials for the annual board/committee evaluation sessions
Acting as the liaison for director search firms
Preparing draft director skill criterions
Reviewing board independence
Evaluating potential board conflicts of interest
Conducting committee charter compliance audits

5. Documenting the Meeting

The primary responsibility that Corporate Secretaries have during board meetings is to take the minutes of the meetings. This ensures greater accountability and disclosure for the proceedings of the board, without placing legal liability upon the corporation as a whole. In order to do this, the Secretary should have a thorough understanding of which items they need to record, and how much detail should be included in those recordings. They should also remain sensitive to special items or circumstances when documenting minutes.

Record Keeping

While taking and recording minutes and executing board meetings is the largest responsibility for Corporate Secretaries, they are also responsible for the substance and dissemination of those minutes. Meeting minutes should always accurate describe, and effectively communicate, all final decisions reached by the Board of Directors. Rather than a scribe for legal documentation, minutes act as the basis upon which the Corporate Secretary implements the board’s pronouncements.

In addition to meeting minutes, the Corporate Secretary retains and organizes all of the corporation’s significant records. This can include:

The company’s Certificate of Good Standing
Business licenses
SEC compliance paperwork
Stock transfers
Proxy statements
Shareholder correspondence
Stakeholders liaison information
Significant contracts
The company’s Capitalization Table

Advisor and Trainer

The Corporate Secretary should always be willing and able to adequately advise the Board of Directors on its duties and objectives, as well as the members’ individual roles. Additionally, when new board members are appointed to the corporation’s Board of Directors, the Corporate Secretary is the one tasked with overseeing their orientation, training, and briefings. Essentially, they keep all individual members of the Board focused on their principle goals, and ensures all proceedings, actions, and decisions remain in line with legal requirements.

What Makes a Good Corporate Secretary?

The responsibilities of a Corporate Secretary are both specific and varied. Because of this, it can be challenging to narrow down which qualities to look for in potential candidates. Some essential traits to look for would be:

Strong organization and detail-oriented skills
An efficient and patient communicator
Effective multitasking skills
An excellent and resourceful problem solver
Experience in managing larger departments and individual employees
Sufficient organizational knowledge and familiarity with business laws and regulations
Sound judgment and discreetness where appropriate
Acquainted with and comfortable with bureaucratic limitations and guidelines
Ability to perform well under pressure
A calm and rational mediator and liaison between executives

In general, the Corporate Secretary of an organization should always have an in-depth, thorough understanding of the total governance process and legal principles that exist in the company. They should then be able to use that information effectively when communicating with Board Members. When a Corporate Secretary is efficient, conscientious, and strong, they have the potential to provide vital benefits to the governing board and the organization as a whole.

The post 10 Must-Have Traits of a Corporate Secretary appeared first on SpriggHR.

Authority and Responsibility – How Do They Compare?

Emily Barr — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 14:15:26 +0000

Authority and Responsibility – How Do They Compare?

In an organization, efficiently dividing work among people and coordinating their duties and tasks towards a common objective should always be a central goal. Managers and employees alike will find an extra layer of job security, and overall company success, if they have a thorough understanding of two essential work concepts: authority and responsibility. Success at work requires both of them, not just one.

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Authority and Responsibility: What Do They Mean?

What is Authority?

In simple terms, authority refers to the commanding of subordinates, the issuing of orders and instructions, and the process of exacting obedience from a workforce. While authority is defined as having the power to give orders and be obeyed, it also encompasses the power to make decisions on the organization’s behalf. As a result, whether or not someone in a position of authority acts hinges upon their own perception of the objectives of the organization.

Usually, any official authority embedded into a job description is ineffective. While status and ranking influence the amount of leeway your subordinates have, authority is influenced largely by the individual characteristics of the leader. For example, the presence of leadership traits such as intelligence, experience, and creativity, are likely to influence the amount of respect garnered for your authority, thus increasing your power to command others.

A manager needs authority. It makes their position real and quantifiable, and provides them the power to order their subordinates and get them to comply in accordance with the company’s objectives. Whenever there is a chain of superior-subordinate business relations in a company, it is authority that binds them and provides a framework for responsibility.

What is Responsibility?

Responsibility refers to the state of being accountable or answerable for any obligation, trust, or debt. It is the obligation to complete an assigned task on time, and to the best of your ability. While authority does not automatically come with every job, task, or duty, responsibility arises in every single position in a company. It is always some combination of tasks, duties, goals, objectives, teams, deadlines, and all other terms that describes what someone does at work. Responsibility, is, essentially, the ability to respond to various work-related tasks, making it a universal facet of any job.

Authority and Responsibility as a Character Trait

Employees of any standing will have varying levels of innate initiative and leadership abilities. When an individual has a high amount of these qualities in their everyday work, they can easily create their own authority and ensure the completion of their tasks is done properly and in a timely manner. These are the individuals who ask before they are told, who suggest and negotiate, who persuade through diplomacy, fact, and reason. These are the individuals who think through all possible options and scenarios, getting themselves ready for a delegation of authority from their boss should that conversation come. Instead of waiting for authority to be plopped into their laps by some higher-up, they are proactive and authoritative with themselves consistently.

Authority and Responsibility: How Are They Connected?

The Relationship Between Authority and Responsibility

Responsibility without authority is a common problem in organizations with uneven, inconsistent management. Individuals who end up with responsibility without authority will always find it much harder to succeed and will find themselves in trouble more frequently than those with a strong authority presence. This is largely due to the interconnectedness of authority and responsibility when it comes to making an organization successful as a whole. Proper authority exists to delegate tasks effectively in order to meet the organizational objectives. When there is no authority, the enforcement of duties and tasks falls to the wayside, and employee efforts stray from the path towards progress.

If an individual is given some level of responsibility without sufficient authority enforcing that, they are likely not going to perform to the best of their ability, and could even fail to accomplish the task at all. However, the relationship between authority and responsibility is reciprocal. While sufficient authority should be a given, too much authority with a disproportionate amount of responsibility can also cause issues. If excess authority is delegated to an individual without a matching amount of responsibility, then the delegated authority will be misused in one way or another.

The Key Differences

The objective of any management team is to establish a sound organizational structure, and the only way to do so is to have an effective authority and responsibility relationship embedded into the company. As we have already discussed, whenever authority is used, responsibility ensues. But what are the distinctions between these two concepts?

Basis for Comparison	Authority	Responsibility
Meaning	The power or right, that is attached to a particular job or designation, to give orders, enforce rules, make decisions, and exact obedience.	The duty or obligation to undertake and/or accomplish a task successfully, as assigned by the senior or determined by the individual’s commitment or circumstances.
Definition	The legal right to issue orders.	The corollary of authority.
Results From…	A formal position in a company.	A superior-subordinate relationship.
Task of the Manager	To delegate authority.	To assume responsibility.
Requires…	The ability to give orders.	The ability to follow orders.
Direction of Flow	Downward.	Upward.
Objective	To make decisions and implement them effectively.	To execute duties and responsibilities, as assigned by a superior.
Duration	Continues over a long period of time.	Ends once the task is accomplished.

In Conclusion

Authority and responsibility are inherent to organizational roles and positions in very different ways, but are symbiotic and codependent enough to make them both critical points of focus for any successful company. While assigning certain responsibilities to an employee, the required amount of authority should also be bestowed on them so they are able to successfully complete it. Essentially, the delegation of authority can only be effective if it matches with the assigned responsibility.

If an authority is given to an individual that is much greater than the responsibility, it ultimately results in the misuse of authority. Similarly, if responsibility is assigned that is greater than the authority provided with it, the tasks will not be carried out properly. The primary goal of managing the relationship between authority and responsibility in your business endeavors is to find the balance between the two. As a delegator of authority, it is your responsibility to find the right ratio of authority to responsibility that will yield a successful completion of tasks consistently across your workforce.

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Authority and Responsibility

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5 Leadership Trends in 2020

Emily Barr — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 16:23:46 +0000

5 Leadership Trends in 2020

In a time of ongoing, and unprecedented, organizational disruption, being a great leader is critical in keeping your organization on track towards success, even in the face of unfamiliar challenges. As a leader, it is important to recognize disruptions not as obstacles that will hinder your advancement as a company, but rather opportunities to improve upon existing organizational processes, or develop new ones better suited to the modern business world.

Why is it Important to Stay Up to Date on Current Leadership Trends?

If a leader wants to be truly engaged with the work they are doing, they need to stay on top of all the current trends that are influencing their company, industry, team members, and themselves. Today, organizations world-wide are seeing massive macroeconomic shifts in the market, shifts which are largely impacting the finances, success, and morale of the company. Being a good leader is as critical as ever, and a central component of that is reframing the way in which you approach leadership itself.

Changes, whether rapid or gradual, familiar or unfamiliar, should serve as indicators for how to improve on how the company is operating. Disruptions can be challenging to navigate, especially when they are deeply unfamiliar and unprecedented like those companies are feeling today. But, they also have the potential to be a great source of inspiration when envisioning the future of the company, leading to new methods of organizational operations that may not have been possible as recently as last year.

Innovation in Leading the Disruption

Every disruption has the possibility to open another door to bigger and better opportunities. The key is to recognize which business drivers are critical in the emergence of disruptions. Some of the annual trends that drive organizational change include:

Accelerating Disruption

Evidently, organizations are facing one of the largest disruptions they have likely ever had to deal with in recent history. Instilling plans of actions for recovery is critical, but so too is the acknowledgement that other disruptions are not on pause while you deal with this one. Companies should continue to monitor market trends and disruption risks and have a plan of action for how to leverage those disruptions for strategic advantage. A critical part of this is recognizing the importance of disruption itself, and the opportunities that can arise if you manipulate the outcome of those disruptions in your favour.

But how can you go about monitoring those trends, especially when so much of the market is in a major downturn currently? One essential method is the strategic business resilience planning process. Similar to how many organizational operating standards are rapidly changing in response to the effects of COVID-19, this process looks much different now than it did in the past. Its central aim, however, remains the same: to provide a structure for leaders to use when they consider both current and potential organizational disruptions. This process systematically lays out the stepos of envisioning the future of your company, enabling leaders to develop a business strategy that can turn disruption into business advantage.

Adaptive Leadership

As business processes are changing and evolving to adapt to disruptions, so too should leaders. When a company faces a disruption that forces deep-rooted change in how operations are carried out, leaders need to be able to elevate the quality of their leadership to meet those new demands.

Adaptive leadership can be seen as a practical leadership framework, helping both individuals and larger teams and organizations adapt to changing environments so they can effectively respond to recurring or sudden disruptions in a timely manner.

Organizational Innovation

Well designed and executed innovation pushes any organization to the top of the competitive market, setting them apart of what they can offer to potential clients, customers, and shareholders. What many organizations fail to recognize, however, is how closely linked innovation is to adaptability.

In times where disruption is the new norm, companies need to build innovation into their DNA. They need to get comfortable with the idea of constantly updating and adapting what they do, and how they do it, to meet evolving strategic goals and mend new issues that arise in those processes. Essentially, while leaders elevate their leadership, they should simultaneously be updating the overall systems, processes, and cultural beliefs that underpin their companies.

Digital Transformation

Many leaders view the implementation of digital processes as a step in the right direction towards innovation and success. However, while it is critical to be effective at leveraging digital tools where appropriate, digital transformation itself has the ability to destroy value as well.

When so many organizations are shifting to remote work that relies on digital connectivity and technological processes rather than in-person methods of business, the lines between the physical and digital worlds are becoming more and more blurred. Digital transformation is a trillion-dollar industry that aims to integrate digital technology into all aspects of business. However, the painful reality is that almost all digital transformation efforts fail. According to a McKinsey & Co. study, 70% of complex, large-scale technological change programs don’t reach their stated goals. In order to be successful in implementing these tools effectively and efficiently, leaders need to consider the realistic outcomes that such a transformative change will have on their organization.

The Top 5 Leadership Trends of Today

When so many organizations are busy navigating a new way of working that is unfamiliar, the priority might be less on innovation and more on simply staying afloat. However, that doesn’t mean leadership trends fall to the wayside. In fact, many of them can be utilized to your advantage, strengthening your ability to successfully lead your organization through this disruption and boost overall morale, and ultimately, organizational success.

Here are some of the top leadership trends of 2020 that can help you to better your means of leadership, even in times of crisis:

1. Increase in Flexible Schedules

Offering flexibility in how employees work might seem an impossible task when work is required to be remote. However, implementing a system of a shorter workweek for example, may in fact be the solution. A recent study also proved that employee morale improves with flexible work schedule arrangements, with over 90% of employees agreeing their enthusiasm for work would increase if their leaders were to be more lenient in discussions of time scheduling.

Leaders should remain steadfast in reinforcing the requirements and expectations for the work quality and amount that is expected from their employees, but they should remain receptive to new ways of providing flexibility to their employees.

2. Leading Remote Workers

As flexible scheduling increases, so too does the number of remote workers you have to manage. Not only that, but many organizations today are managing a near-complete remote workforce. Some may be finding that the reduced cost for employers to run the workspace, and the reduced commute times and costs for employees, are benefitting the organization. Some others, however, may be finding that their workplace-accustomed employees are having trouble adapting to this new way of working.

As beneficial as remote work may be for some employees, not all will be receptive to it, especially when it is their only option. Workplaces are slowly reopening across the country, but workers and leaders alike should still be well-equipped to manage and work in remote settings as efficiently as they work in-office. Some general strategies leaders can use to remedy the unique challenges of remote work can include:

Remembering that remote team members will have varying responses to the new standards and expectations involved in remote work and that some employees have challenging work-from-home disruptions
Building and maintaining trust-based relationships, as much of the work you could monitor in-office, will be done without your direct supervision
Setting clear standards for conduct and expectations for work
Constantly communicating and maintaining a positive, morale-boosting company culture
Getting employees together face-to-face via online video chatting meeting rooms to increase communication and limit isolation

3. Increase in Accountability

In the 2020 business market, accountability and radical transparency are more prominent than ever. In the digital age where workflow and demands travel at rapid speeds, and where employees are digitally connected, executive leaders cannot afford to be uncommunicative with critical information. Similarly, with the abrupt increase in remote work, the need for personal accountability in employees and managers alike is skyrocketing.

As a leader, managing accountability is one of the most critical parts of ensuring your relationship with your employees is trustworthy and strong.

4. Employees Developing New Skills

The trends and advances that exist in the business world reflect the changes that are taking place around us. As the world constantly evolves and adapts to new situations and crises, so too do the workings of organizations worldwide. Employees grow, roles morph, and processes adapt to the changing demands of the market and the needs of the business. As a result of that, people need to constantly be acquiring new skills.

Companies need to have a clearly defined process of how it is they are assisting their employees to develop the new and necessary skills required to succeed in the constantly evolving world. While leaders cannot make people develop new skills, they can influence and challenge them to take the necessary steps.

5. Human Resources: A Constantly Growing Field

Human Resource professionals play a strategic and important role as the world faces an unfamiliar challenge and workers are navigating a technological, distinctly un-human way of working. Ensuring people adjust to their WFH environments is in fact, a very diverse undertaking. Several studies conclude that employees are battling everything from loneliness to remembering to take breaks while combating the distractions of their small children’s needs. There are also connectivity issues and coaching opportunities to engage employees in finding new ways in managing their workloads…to mention a few. HR will be tasked with extending support mechanisms that do ensure work continuance while respecting employee’s unique and personal needs.

Leadership in Times of Distress

Being a leader today is particularly daunting, but there is help to navigate your way through this unfamiliar territory. There is a surplus of resources available including your own colleagues. A trend emerging is to establish a weekly online leadership forum that builds on the exchange of ideas and collective support of the new leader’s requirements.

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Creating an Effective Leadership Development Program

Emily Barr — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 16:03:20 +0000

Creating an Effective Leadership Development Program

Creating and implementing a strong leadership development program for your organization is essential. Especially in the current climate, members of an organization need strong leaders to turn to for guidance and support. A good leadership development program not only increases the current leadership competency but provides your employees the opportunity to develop the necessary skills they need in order to move up within your organization.

What is Leadership Development?

Leadership development is a practice that aims to expand the capacity for individuals to perform in leadership roles within organizations. Leadership in this sense refers to the roles that facilitate the execution of the organization’s strategy, done so through building alignment, gaining mindshare, and developing the capabilities of others.

Leadership development does not apply strictly to formal leadership roles, those positions within organizations with corresponding authority to make decisions and take responsibility. A leadership development program can also help informal leadership roles that carry little official authority, such as a member of a team who influences team engagement and direction, or a lateral peer who listens and negotiates through influence.

What Can You Accomplish with a Leadership Development Program?

Leadership development is often thought to be the key to business success which is why many organizations seek to invest in leadership development as a core business strategy.

Strong leadership influences culture and plays a critical role in any company’s sustained success. It drives engagement and motivates employees, which in turn improves employee performance and increases organizational productivity. According to a study by the Center for Creative Leadership, 65% of companies with mature leadership development programs drive improved business results, compared to 6% of companies without a leadership development program. Of the same vein, 86% of organizations with formal leadership development programs responded rapidly to changing market conditions, whereas only 52% of companies with undeveloped and immature programs were able to accomplish the same.

Creating a Comprehensive Leadership Development Program

It is the senior leadership’s responsibility to invest, develop, and grow organizational leaders. This systematic succession pipeline ensures that new leaders in an organization are equipped to inspire, motivate, and engage the workforce.

However, many companies neglect to identify the specific attributes and capabilities of their own leaders. While companies continuously incorporate leadership development training programs, many still fall short of achieving the desired results. Consider the following findings:

77% of organizations report that they are experiencing a leadership gap.
67% of millennials are looking for new jobs, and of those who plan to stay, 91% bank on remaining in their current job for fewer than 3 years.
63% of millennial employees say their leadership skills are not being fully developed.
83% of business say it’s important to develop leaders at all levels, but only 5% of all organizations have implemented leadership development programs for all levels.

According to a Gallup study, 55% of managers and employees report that they are either actively looking for a different job than the one they have now or watching for job opportunities. The same pattern of disconnect and disengagement runs true for higher-up positions as well. Over 50% of managers feel disconnected from both their responsibilities and their organization’s mission as a whole.

These statistics make it clear that while companies recognize the value of leadership development programs, many are ultimately failing both the leaders who participate in them and their organizations. The first responsibility of the senior leaders curating these programs is to ensure that they are getting the very best out of the workforce. Developing an effective leadership program must start with equipping leaders with the specific skills, tools, and behaviors they will need to confidently lead others and drive the performance of their team or organization.

Developing leaders at all levels means approaching each leader level with respect to their current skills and the pre-existing desired capabilities for leadership, ensuring there are no gaps in performance. Here is a guide to customizing a leadership development program for your organization by leader level, ensuring each leader can develop the targeted productively.

Developing Emerging Leaders

Emerging leaders are those at the very beginning of their leadership journey. Often, the first steps involved in developing emerging leaders are to identify them, increase their self-awareness, focus on relational skills, and increase evidence-based leadership skills. This helps to prepare emerging leaders for the shift from managing themselves to managing others in the future.

Early-level leaders are still becoming acquainted to organizational leadership, meaning they need time adjust to the broader management style and common language as they grow and form their own leadership plan. Some best practices to include in an emerging leader development program include:

Self-Assessment – this helps identify current areas of improvement.
Leading a Key Functional Project – this helps them to practice increases in responsibility and accountability.
Group Coaching – this allows for emerging leaders to grow together, connect across organizational functions, consider future scenarios, and develop a management mindset.
Mentoring and Coaching – these relationships help emerging leaders become more exposed to other parts of the organization.

Developing Middle Management

Middle management leadership development needs to take special consideration the specific needs of seasoned leaders, compared to emerging or senior-level leaders. Leaders that fall into this category tend to be supervisory, managerial, or directorial-level leaders. These middle management leaders need a program curated to deepen their current skills, engage and influence others to amplify their results, operate strategically within their existing management framework, lead other leaders, and establish teams.

A middle management leadership development program should include the following practices:

Exposure – to higher-level leaders outside of the organization, in order to strengthen insights.
Professional or Industry Association Involvement – this helps them to gain deeper knowledge and forge connections in the industry itself.
Action Learning – this allows for middle management leaders to practice solving high-level, complex, real-world business issues with diverse, cross-functional groups.
Individual Mentoring and Coaching – these are beneficial when relationships are forged with higher-level or senior leaders, allowing for middle management to gain an understanding of the business.
Acting as a Coach or Mentor – helping the emerging, high-potential leaders strengthens their coaching and relational skills.
Leading a Major Organizational Initiative – experience in managing a full-time strategic project assignment gives them the opportunity to practice building high-performing teams and leading other leaders.
Volunteer Leadership or Board Role – voluntary influential positions in business decision making for an industry or professional associations helps build experience in influencing others.
360–Degree Assessments – helps middle management leaders identify areas for improvement and how they are perceived by others.

Developing Senior Leaders

Once leaders rise to enterprise-wide roles, the complexity of what successful leadership development looks like increases as well. Senior leaders are expected to strategically manage the organization as a whole and manage specific business units. They are no longer responsible for just groups of leaders, but rather are expected to act as forward-looking and forward-thinking company visionaries, driving action on an organization-wide scale.

A senior leadership development program can include practices such as the following:

Individual Coaching – this eases the transition into discussing complex, bigger-picture business issues and development goals.
Executive Team Coaching – this helps to increase team cohesion and enhances senior leaders’ ability to identify a shared vision.
360–Degree Assessments – like its usefulness for middle management leadership development, these can help identify needed areas of improvement and impact of their leadership style on others.
Executive Education Programs – advances degrees in executive leadership helps to prepare leaders build business acumen and the critical industry-specific skills needed for enterprise-wide success.

The 5 Critical Skills

While you should adapt your approaches according to leader level, there are 5 key critical skills that should permeate all aspects of your various leadership development programs. These include:

1. Coaching – This is one of the most crucial skills that potential and existing leaders alike can leverage in order to unleash the full potential of their direct reports. Coachable moments happen every day. A leader with strong coaching skills can learn to recognize and seize these moments, turning them into valuable learning experiences for those they are leading.

2. Accountability – The strongest leaders understand that their own success hinges much more on their team’s performance than on their own. Leaders are no longer individual contributors to the organization, and they should not be assessed as such. They are held accountable for others’ actions and result, as well as just their own, and must take accountability for team outcomes.

3. Change Management – Changes in the marketplace, employee turnover, company growth, and countless other factors contribute to ongoing business shifts. Change management training should be a part of any leadership development program, ensuring leaders can harness the power of vision and provide strong and clear leadership during any season, capitalizing on transitional times to improve company performance.

4. Influence and Negotiation – Learning how to be strong influencers and fair negotiators allows leaders to return to their roles knowing that it is not about established authority as a leader, but rather the ability to best influence an employee to achieve results.

5. Communication – This is a skill that needs to constantly be optimized in order to remain fully relevant and useful. In a leadership role, communication happens at all hours of the day through a vast array of mediums, including presentation, one-on-one sessions, phone calls, emails, text messages, videoconferencing, and so on.

An Effective Leadership Development Program is Essential to Your Organization’s Success

Closing the gap between the desire for excellent leadership within your organization, and the reality of failed leadership programs, requires a serious look inward to gauge your organization’s readiness and current leadership competence. Perhaps your organization has put leadership development on the backburner recently, choosing to focus on more pressing matters given the current situation. However, the necessity for a program that enables the emergence of strong leadership is just as essential as ever. Considering company and level-specific challenges and the needs of all types of leaders in today’s business world is critical to the development of a solid leadership strategy.

Overall, leaders should use the core skills of a leadership development program to build quality relationships, align priorities effectively, and find a win-win that leads to completed projects and delivered results.

The post Creating an Effective Leadership Development Program appeared first on SpriggHR.

Coaching & Leadership Archives • SpriggHR

5 Reasons to Hold Regular All-Hands Meetings

Upcoming Webinar - April 8, 2:00PM EST / 11:00AM PST

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5 Reasons to Hold Regular All-Hands Meetings

What are All-Hands Meetings?

Why are All-Hands Meetings Valuable?

1. Keeps your team updated and improves alignment.

2. Celebrates people and uplifts team spirit and morale.

3. Gives a voice to everyone.

4. Fosters a healthy company culture.

5. Connects remote teams and workers with executives.

Best Practices for Running All-Hands Meetings

Prep Your Team

Keep All-Hands Meetings Short and On Time

Focus on the Right Content

Switch Things Up

Share Successes and Opportunities for Growth

Aim for Interactivity

Ask for Feedback

How Can You Hold Regular All-Hands Meetings Remotely?

Tech Setup

Preparation Phase

Delivering Content and Facilitating Interaction

In Summary

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The Importance of Leadership Communication

Upcoming Webinar - April 8, 2:00PM EST / 11:00AM PST

Upcoming Webinar - March 20, 1:00PM EST / 10:00AM PST

The Importance of Leadership Communication

Leadership Communication Defined

The Importance of Leadership Communication

Tips to Optimize Your Leadership Communication

Best Practices for Effective Leadership Communication.

1. Be honest.

2. Get personal.

3. Be specific.

4. Focus on the leave-behinds.

5. Keep an open mind.

6. Listen.

7. Read between the lines.

8. Speak to groups as individuals.

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Leadership Communication

The Cost of Poor Leadership Communication

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Short-Term Goals & the Benefits of Quick Wins

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Short-Term Goals & the Benefits of Quick Wins

What are Short-term goals?

The Benefits of Setting and Achieving Short-term goals

1. Improved Focus

2. Provide Clarity to Your Overall Plan

3. They Combat Procrastination

4. Gain Insightful Feedback

Making Your Short-Term Goals S.M.A.R.T(ER)

Achievable and S.M.A.R.T Short Terms Goals

Short-Term Personal Goals

Short-Term Financial Goals

Short-Term Fitness Goals

Short-Term Career Goals

Measuring and Tracking Short-term goal Progress

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Strategy vs. Tactics: How Do They Work Together?

Upcoming Webinar - April 8, 2:00PM EST / 11:00AM PST

Upcoming Webinar - March 20, 1:00PM EST / 10:00AM PST

Strategy vs. Tactics: How Do They Work Together?

Strategy vs. Tactics

Strategy and Tactics Defined

The Relationship Between Strategy vs. Tactics

Strategy vs. Tactics in Action

In Summary

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